I Am What I Think I Am
It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imita- tion of somebody else's life with perfection.
-Bhagavad Gita 3.35
In 1902, the sociologist Charles Horton Cooley wrote: "I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am."
Let that blow your mind for a moment.
Our identity is wrapped up in what others think of us—or, more accurately, what we think others think of us.
Not only is our self-image tied up in how we think others see us, but most of our efforts at self-improvement are really just us trying to meet that imagined ideal. If we think someone we ad- mire sees wealth as success, then we chase wealth to impress that person. If we imagine that a friend is judging our looks, we tailor our appearance in response. In West Side Story, Maria meets a boy who's into her. What's her very next song? "I Feel Pretty."
As of this writing, the world's only triple Best Actor Oscar winner, Daniel Day-Lewis, has acted in just six films since 1998. He prepares for each role extensively, immersing himself com- pletely in his character. For the role of Bill the Butcher in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, he trained as a butcher, spoke with a thick Irish accent on and off the set, and hired circus perform- ers to teach him how to throw knives. And that's only the begin- ning. He wore only authentic nineteenth-century clothing and walked around Rome in character, starting arguments and fights with strangers. Perhaps thanks to that clothing, he caught pneumonia.
Day-Lewis was employing a technique called method acting, which requires the actor to live as much like his character as pos- sible in order to become the role he's playing. This is an incredible skill and art, but often method actors become so absorbed in their character that the role takes on a life beyond the stage or screen. “I will admit that I went mad, totally mad," Day-Lewis said to the Independent years later, admitting the role was "not so good for my physical or mental health."
Unconsciously, we're all method acting to some degree. We have personas we play online, at work, with friends, and at home. These different personas have their benefits. They enable us to make the money that pays our bills, they help us function in a workplace where we don't always feel comfortable, they let us maintain relationships with people we don't really like but need to interact with. But often our identity has so many layers that we lose sight of the real us, if we ever knew who or what that was in the first place. We bring our work role home with us, and we take the role we play with our friends into our romantic life, without any conscious control or intention. However suc- cessfully we play our roles, we end up feeling dissatisfied, de- pressed, unworthy, and unhappy. The "I" and "me," small and vulnerable to begin with, get distorted.
We try to live up to what we think others think of us, even at the expense of our values.
Rarely, if ever, do we consciously, intentionally, create our own values. We make life choices using this twice-reflected im- age of who we might be, without really thinking it through. Cooley called this phenomenon the "Looking-Glass Self."
We live in a perception of a perception of ourselves, and we've lost our real selves as a result. How can we recognize who we are and what makes us happy when we're chasing the distorted re- flection of someone else's dreams?
You might think that the hard part about becoming a monk is letting go of the fun stuff: partying, sex, watching TV, owning things, sleeping in an actual bed (okay, the bed part was pretty rough). But before I took that step there was a bigger hurdle I had to overcome: breaking my "career" choice to my parents.
By the time I was wrapping up my final year of college, I had decided what path I wanted to take. I told my parents I would be turning down the job offers that had come my way. I always joke that as far as my parents were concerned, I had three career op- tions: doctor, lawyer, or failure. There's no better way to tell your parents that everything they did for you was a waste than to be- come a monk.
Like all parents, mine had dreams for me, but at least I had eased them into the idea that I might become a monk: Every year since I was eighteen I'd spent part of the summer interning at a finance job in London and part of the year training at the ashram in Mumbai. By the time I made my decision, my mother's first concern was the same as any mother's: my well- being. Would I have health care? Was "seeking enlightenment" just a fancy way of saying "sitting around all day"?
